


On the same boat

by Luchtspieg



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F, Found Family, Gen, Sorrow, sleeping over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 05:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17298431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luchtspieg/pseuds/Luchtspieg
Summary: Mari, being the single child of an wealthy man, doesn't really know about humility or taking care of others. However, that doesn't mean she can just sit back and do nothing at the sight of a downhearted Yohane, even if she doesn't really know what's happening to her. Whether she knows how to look after others or not is irrelevant -- she's determined to make her feel better, no matter the lengths she has to go through.That's just what family means.





	On the same boat

It all began on a Friday afternoon. As the sun lingered through the end of the horizon, the sky turning into the colours of kumquat and tangerine, people all across Uchiura could sense autumn was already setting in Japan. “The season of gloom and a reminder of age”, as Hanamaru just announced that same day.

While Mari was going back to the chairwoman’s office -her office, in some sense- with an orange juice carton, she couldn’t help herself but stop to look through the windows for a moment. Despite she never considered herself to be a romantic person, there was something about autumn that shook her soul to the core. Somewhere in her heart, she was convinced autumn was a bad time you had to try and get over as soon as possible, for nothing good ever happened at that time. Truth be told, it wasn’t like she wasn’t biased due to her own personal experiences; nonetheless, she still firmly believed it was a bad time altogether.

When she resumed her walk, it didn’t took her long to reach the door to her office; however, she didn’t step in immediately. Although she totally knew who was inside the room -for only the cleaning staff was allowed to get inside without her permission-, she still knocked the door twice, a sign of respect, before entering. She was certain she would be in a deep trance at the moment, so she decided to gradually stimulate her out of that state instead of abruptly cutting her stream of thought. That was what Kanan taught her.

Mari sat a few inches away from her, approaching her slowly. No words came out of her mouth.

 _Did she even notice me?_ , she wondered. After several seconds of careful deliberation, she decided to take a course of action.

“I don’t really know what’s your favorite flavor, so I just guessed… Uhm, _orange_ kinda reminds me of my days in _California_ , so I thought...”

Yohane’s eyes turned to the juice. It felt like it had been years since she last had one of those on her hands – let alone drink from it. The memories of past days filled both her heart and mind, running all across her body like a pulse of warm blood to a stone-cold body. And, while she didn’t show any external signs of it, Mari could sense that pulse.

Mari took one of her hands out of her thighs and put the carton on the palm.

“Will you have a _sippie_?”

 _What would Kanan do in a situation like this?_ , she thought. Certainly, she wasn’t used to being the one to look after the others, having always been the one to be taken care of, so all she knew came from the perspective of the receiving end. Moreover, whether out of pride or a sharp sense of what’s suitable at any given moment, she was certain she couldn’t ask for help. Whatever she was set to do, she had to find out on her own at this point. Otherwise, the atmosphere in the room would shatter to pieces, and Mari’s magic would never have an effect on Yohane again.

After some minutes, Mari looked at the time on her phone. The janitor would be asking them to leave the building any moment now, so they had to leave. She faced Yohane, still drinking from the carton, and explained her the situation in a gentle whisper.

“Yohane, we have to go.”

Her sorrowful expression broke her heart, but there was nothing left Mari could do to help her. They had already spent a whole hour just sitting around at her office, doing close no nothing at all. Was there something else she could do to help her?

“I’m sorry, but not even I can just tell the janitor to hand me the keys. It’s up to him to close the building… Don’t you want to go home, anyway?”

While she said nothing, her eyes told her enough to make her understand the whole picture behind her gloom. It wasn’t until then that she understood what she could –and perhaps had to– do.

“Do you want me to call your parents and tell them you will stay at my…” She cleared her throat. “Well, at my ‘house _’_ tonight?”

All she expected was a small nod, or even a feeble “yes”, for she could sense the pressure building up on Yohane’s chest. Instead, what she actually did was holding her hand and squeezing it lightly, bringing her memories of her own childhood. As a response, Mari caressed her hand with the thumb before handing her the phone.

They gladly accepted.

 

The sight of the dolphins was one of the best things of taking a ferry for Mari, but there was none in sight that evening. She then thought even the dolphins were aware it was not the right time to frivolities, for their presence would have turned a mostly silent ride into a sensory tuna can Yohane wouldn’t have been able to escape from. Her eyes closed, Mari silently thanked the dolphins for helping her. She didn’t think they could listen to her, but it was the least they deserved.

“I just realised I don’t have a pyjama for tonight...” Yohane lamented in a dim voice.

“I usually sleep in a camisole all year round. Do you want to try one out for the night?”

She only needed to look at her face to feel concern and regret building up inside her; it was clear she would reject the idea, if asked twice. Unaware of what was suitable to soothe her, Mari moved her fringe upwards and craned her neck to kiss her forehead. “Leave it all to me,” she then muttered. “I will find a way.” After all, wasn’t she supposed to be in charge to sort out the problems of all the students at Uranohoshi? It was part of the chairwoman’s job – _her_ job.

For a moment, she thought the corners in Yohane’s mouth were pointing upwards. As subtle as it was, she celebrated it with all her might.

 

Yohane was at a loss of words when they stepped into the hotel. She saw them in films, her mother’s magazines and YouTube advertisements, but this was the first time she had the chance to step into a hotel, let alone a luxurious one. Only then she realised what the sheer magnitude of Mari’s wealth actually was.

“Do you like what you see? You sure seem impressed!”

“This is... big. Really big. Is this your ‘house’?”

“I don’t have a house of my own, actually. Since Dad’s the CEO of a hotel chain, all of the hotels in the Ohara firm have a special room that can’t be booked. It’s modified to be as flexible as a regular house, having unsecured furniture you can move around and an unlocked TV where you can connect everything you want. Feel free to bring your game console with you whenever you ever feel like it!”

“Bring my console? But I can’t just go back home and bring them here.”

“Silly! I mean next time…”

 _Next time?_ Yohane wondered, as they approached the reception desk.

“Good afternoon and welcome to--” the receptionist blurted, before she noticed it was Mari. “Oh, sorry. Hi, Mari! Is everything ok at your room?”

“No, not really. I’ve brought this friend of mine over to spend the night at home, but…” her voice turned into a mutter. “Do you have a pajama for, uhm, _important_ guests? Something pretty, you know...”

There wasn’t such a thing as a fancy pyjama for guests, as it was compulsory to make them plain white in order to be washed with bleach after the guests left their rooms. Mari was fully aware of this, of course, but she had no other choice than playing dumb.

“No… I thought you, of all people, knew how things work in a hotel, Mari!”

“And I do, but–”

The receptionist shrugged in a very visible fashion, forgetting for a moment she was at her workplace.

“Look: our pyjamas have the logo of the hotel embroidered on them. I know you’d prefer something cute for your friend, but we can’t do anything about that. At least you have the logo of the hotel embroidered on it, so it’s like… A souvenir from a fancy place?”

Mari snorted.

“Can’t she try to use your pyjamas? You seem to have more or less the same sizes…”

“I use camisoles, and she…” Mari shut up, finishing the sentence with a disapproving face.

“I get it, I get it. Sorry; this is all I have.”

While the receptionist was off to the warehouse, Mari turned back to face Yohane. “Sorry, I tried to talk her into looking for something pretty, but all they have are white clothes,” she lamented. “It’s either a camisole or that…”

“It’s not a big deal,” Yohane argued, a dull gaze in her eyes. She was barely smaller than Mari, only off by a few centimeters, so it would have been easy for her to face her companion; as a result, whenever she was down or distracted, Mari could notice. Nonetheless, whatever she could think to lift her spirits –she reasoned– would be better in the privacy of their room, away from the eyes of the other guests.

 _I hope you never get to need it,_ she thought; _but, if you ever do, I hope my home can someday become a haven for you._

 

Mari’s grandfather always said there was something sacred about doors. While the front door of the house was open, it was connected to the rest of the world, so everyone and everything could peek inside their hearts if they weren’t careful. As a consequence, he stated, a house without a door was nothing more than a bunch of walls and windows. But as soon as the door was closed, the house became a home, isolating the people inside from the rest of the universe, allowing them to heal and grow at the own pace.

Only now she realised what he meant by that, feeling how the whole mood in the room changed as soon as the door was closed. They both left their handbags leaning against the sofa and sat together, facing a coffee table with a letter on top. It was a letter from her father, a letter she was yet to dare reading.

“Do you like the sofa?” Mari asked, reaching for Yohane’s hand. She was surprised how well looked after her skin was, for how little she seemed to care about her personal image.

“It’s comfortable,” she confessed. “From the hotel?”

“Not really; the other rooms only have chairs. This sofa was one of the first things we brought here to make this room more like our own personal space.”

“Do your parents also live here?”

“They used to, but Dad is always away and Mom left me this room for myself when I turned 13. She said a girl must have her own space. Do you share your room with a sibling?”

“Single child,” she said in an apprehensive note. She wasn’t sure whether or not Mari was as well.

“Same here, but I… You could say I grew to see Kanan as an older sister. Well, not exactly a sister, because we’ve always been worlds apart, but you know.”

“I expected you would say Dia in any case.”

“My relationship with Dia hasn’t always been as ‘good’ as it is now, actually .She used to be… Pretty much like Ruby is now, back in the day.” Mari lifted her arms, weaving her fingers together as she put her palms outwards. “So Kanan was like the glue that held us together, so to speak. Sort of what Hanamaru is with you two now,” she remarked with a mocking grin.

“Yeah, I guess so…” Yohane muttered.

Mari got up from the sofa and headed to the wardrobe. “Are you…?“ Mari looked up the translation for _cold-blooded_ on her phone. “Oh, yes, of course. Are you cold-natured? I want to find you a better attire in the closet.”

“Yes.” It was relieving, not being forced to say something in the lines of _I’m always cold, missing the fire from hell_ for once.

Mari took a white shirt and a dark blue indoors sweater from the wardrobe. She didn’t even remember how long it had been since she last used those clothes, bringing her memories from past times. How would another person look on a cotton shirt and trousers, after she put them on thousands of times? Would they still be as warm as they were the first day? And more importantly, would that be a farewell to those clothes?

“Do you want me to wait in the bathroom? You have a full-body mirror right there, so take your time to decide.”

 

Yohane didn’t really know how to describe what she thought about Mari. For the longest time, she just assumed she was as much a spoiled brat as any other rich kid, coming on a helicopter and showing off her money every now and then. The only people she seemed to be in good terms with were Dia and Kanan, but even they seemed to be somewhat annoyed by her behaviour every now and then.

There was the time Mari found out Hanamaru didn’t have a phone of her own early into the year, so she bought her an iPhone because it was –according to her– “more intuitive than most phones in the market”, but it seemed like a chance to assert her economic dominance in the group. She was right when she said it was intuitive, though, as Hanamaru proved to be under control of the phone by the next day.

However, no matter how cynical or devious she got, there was an anecdote of her own she couldn't explain without assuming Mari had good intentions after all.

_The first private conversation they had happened a month upon the the beginning of the year, in May. She and You lived in Numazu, so they had to ride the same bus after the weekend training every week. Since the bus route was long and went across several towns, Uchiura included, the schedule was irregular and they had to run sometimes if they wanted to make it in time. And that would become the first of several days where Yohane didn’t make it in time, her muscles sore and aching due to her lack of use to intensive training sessions. So she had to wait alone._

_Or so she thought._

“ _Little demon!” Mari cried from faraway, running to the bus stop. “What are you doing here, on your own? Shouldn’t You be with you?”_

“ _Get lost,” she plainly stated._

_Mari, indifferent to her rude response, went to a nearby vending machine to buy a can of juice._

“ _Come on… Jeez, don’t make that face! Even if you want to be a serious demon, how about some juice? Take it easy.”_

_Yohane was still upset by the bus, but her face turned to puzzling. Was she really so keen on staying with her, given that she was from…? Well, she didn’t know at the time, but it couldn’t be Numazu. So she couldn’t care less about the bus._

“ _Yohane is a serious person after all… Missing a bus just once is not such a big deal, right?”_

“ _But it’s rather depressing to sit here all alone…” She confessed._

“ _What do you mean, alone?” She faked an offended pose, mimicking the stand-up comedians Dia showed her from time to time on her phone. “Am I a ghost, or something?”_

“ _...no?” Yohane’s confusion built up by the moment._

“Then that’s it! _You’re not alone anymore! Hurray!”_

_She was serious about keeping her company, after all._

“ _On such a hot day, after such heavy training,” she went on, “it’s definitely a reward for the two of us for working so hard!”_

“ _A reward? Who would ‘reward’ me by making me miss a bus?”_

“ _Of course, that would be God.” Mari’s careless gaze pointed at the sky, moments before the gears of her brain started to whirr. “Speaking of which, Yohane always defines herself as she furthest existence from God, right…? So that means…”_

_Panic burst into her body. She jumped out of the bench and bowed in front of her. “Sorry, sorry, so sorry! I didn’t notice…!”_

_A noticeable hum came out of Yoahen’s otherwise sealed lips. Mari, carefully keeping her face out of Yohane’s sight, let out a devious smile. “Even if I was an angel, it would still be okay to be a little foxy for the sake of others, wouldn’t it?”, she thought._

From that day on, whenever Yohane was around Mari, her mind would always drift to what happened at the bus station that day. Mari went as far as hopping into the bus and staying at her side until they reached Yohane’s home, straying further and further from the road she herself had to take to go back home. Given she didn’t have anything Mari would seek after, there was no way to explain her behaviour that day.

In the end, she had to accept she did it _not to leave her alone_. And that was the hardest part.

“Mari, I’m already dressed,” Yohane announced.

Mari approached Yohane in silence, her face only letting out a slight delight out of her eyes. If it was for her, they would have never left that room, if only for her to keep staring at the sight of Yohane using what she once considered a wearable charm. It wasn’t until Yohane moved closer to her that the spell broke, and Mari could come back to her senses. She muttered, “Sorry, I don’t know…” She gently shook her head.

“I don’t know why, but I like these clothes,” Yohane confessed.

“Keep them for you; I can’t use them anymore.” Mari shamefully pointed at her own chest. “Also, it’s high quality materials. I’m very demanding when it comes to clothes, and I’m not talking about the price right now,” she admitted in a giggle.

She was talking about the feeling of the clothes, Yohane knew. She developed an allergy to certain kinds of fabric over the last couple of months, so her skin was filled with unsightly rashes and felt itchy. However, it only took her putting Mari’s shirt on to feel her arms and torso slowly healing out of her sight. Would have it been rude to ask for more outgrown shirts?

 

There was a magazine organizer on one side of the room’s dresser Mari never cared to throw away, being as it was a good way to have a glance at the menus available in all the restaurants inside the hotel. There were four restaurants in total, each one of them dedicated to a different culture, so guests could have plenty of room to choose from during their stay.

Of course, Mari had already tried every possible combination available at that point, but it was very handy back when Dia and Kanan used to stay at Mari’s room during the weekends.

“Look,” she announced. “We have a Japanese buffet restaurant, an Italian restaurant, an Indian restaurant and a Chinese restaurant. If you’ve never been at any of the later ones, feel free to ask me – I can tell you the best, the worst and the rest from all of them.” She left all the flyers on the coffee table they were sitting around. “There’s not really anything _bad_ among the Japanese food. That being said, if you want to get sushi, ask the chef what’s from this season.”

“Do you even have fish from other seasons?” Yohane asked in disbelief.

“Well…” Mari bit her lower lip, tracing a mild disapproval with her eyes. “Most foreign guests can’t really tell if you give them unfrozen, raw fish.”

“Can you tell, though?” Yohane muttered, closing her eyes halfway.

“I’m a late bloomer, but yeah. And by late bloomer, I mean Dia herself taught me when I was 10. She said she didn’t want me to be outed for not knowing what Mom can’t teach me.”

“That’s… Surprisingly sweet, coming from her.”

Mari was confused for a moment, before remembering not everyone in Aqours had the chance to know the real Dia. On the outside, people always judged her to be staunch, bestowed with impeccable manners and a ruthless teacher. Nonetheless, that was only the image she wanted to project into the world, for she was actually a supportive and dependable person who always watched out for those who needed her heart. That is, if you got to open the gates of her heart first.

 _Someday,_ Mari thought to herself _, you all will get to know her as much as I do._

“Don’t ask her about that, though. She’s very reticent about people knowing she’s actually caring. She wants to, you know, give off this _yamato nandeshiko_ image from the old poems _._ ”

“But why didn’t you know until you were 10? Didn’t your mother teach you?”

“Uh… My mother is not from Japan?” Mari frowned upon this answer.

“Really?”

Her immediate reply was to move her head sideways in a rapid motion, partly embarrassed. “She was raised in California, but her mother was Italian. That’s why I have fond memories of that place – my Grandpa’s house is in a city called San Francisco. You may have heard that name in a movie.”

“So you really speak English? I always assumed you said random words to brag about your knowledge.”

Mari snorted, trying not to laugh out loud. She failed.

“ _Ok, I didn’t expect that, I have to say._ ” Seeing Yohane’s twisted face, she translated. “Ok, I didn’t expect that… Uh… Yeah, just that.”

“It sounded like the films, when they want to make clear someone is speaking English and the other person doesn’t understand a single word. Only that you don’t have subtitles.”

“I’d be worried if I had. But whatever; where do you want to eat?”

Yohane examined all the flyers, timidly sliding them to her half of the table. The only food she was familiar with was the Japanese, fast food aside, but it would have been a shame not to try food from other countries now she had the chance. After all, it was the first time in years she went to a restaurant, and the first she went with a friend.

Or, at least, what she started to consider as a friend.

But when she thought about it, Mari’s heritage was really complicated. She was not only half-Japanese, but also half-half-American and half-half-Italian, if those words even made sense. Then she realised she didn’t know how you’re supposed to treat with people from other cultures, beyond standard manners. Given there was an Italian restaurant, would Mari feel more comfortable there? She was always surrounded by Japanese customs, after all, so it would be a change.

“Uh… Is it fine if we…” She slowly slided the Italian restaurant flyer across the table. She just begged not to come out as rude.

“Oh. Do you want to have the real deal, huh?” Mari remarked with a side of cheekiness, making Yohane feel a deep relief. She made the right choice so far.

“Well… I don’t know. It will have Italian things all over the place, right?”

“Do you like Italy?” Mari asked, genuinely surprised.

“Well, I…” _Should I say yes? Should I say the truth?_ “I don’t really know anything about the country, sorry,” she muttered as an excuse.

“So you want to know about Italy? I don’t really understand.”

“Yes!” _That’s good, right? That’s being interested. I don’t think she gets many chances to talk about her family, anyway._

“Speak no more, then!”

 

“So tell me, what do you usually do in your free time?” Mari asked during the dinner.

“Oh! Well, I… I like video games. And… I sometimes go watch a film.” Yohane wasn’t sure if it was suitable to remind her of her occult-related hobbies. It all seemed to be going so smoothly without bringing that up… “Do you know the theatre next to the train station? Or maybe you go…” Her voice turned into a mumble, as she said, “somewhere luxurious and totally not-for-broken-girls.”

“You said something?” Mari queried.

“No, no!” Yohane hurried, flushing as she shook her head.

“Oh, well, I thought… Whatever. But yeah, I know the place! That being said… I’m not much of a movie person myself? The few times I’ve gone is because of Dia, who wanted to see a movie really badly and couldn’t wait for the DVD release.”

“What kind of movies does she watch?”

“ _Romance,_ ” she announced, letting her annoyance show up. “And because you don’t have period dramas on the big screen, or she would totally force us to go with her…!” Yohane had a hard time holding a laughter. “It’s the only thing I’d prefer not to do, even with her. I just don’t… I don’t know! It’s not my jam, I guess,” she muttered, afflicted.

“Mari, why are you so affected by that?” Yohane blurted. It only took her a tiny fraction of a second to realise what she just did, before covering her mouth with her hands in embarrassment. Of course, it was too late, for she was aware of what she had just said.

Mari felt like jumping out of her chair in that moment. “Repeat that!” she ordered, her eyes sparkling.

“Why are you...”

“No, no, right before that!”

“But I just said your name!”

“Please…! You never did that before!”

If only Yohane could have defended herself, asking what was the big deal about that. It was true, however; she never got to speak with her using her name, let alone her first name and dropping the honorific. What she didn’t expected was Mari’s reaction.

Then again, considering everything Mari already did for her that evening alone, the least she could do was trying. “M… Ma… Mari!” she finally got around to say.

A hand on her chest and being close to tears, Mari thanked her in silence. Or was she thanking the heavens?

“What’s the big deal, however?” Yohane protested. “I mean – I know I never called you by your name, but this is a little too much.”

That question was enough to bring her back to her previous, gloomy state. She was once again staring at the dish in front of her, leaving behind a thick atmosphere.

“Well… Nothing. Sorry, forget it.”

“What do you mean!?” Yohane’s tone raised, even if the volume remained the same. “You’re going all in for me, yet brush it all off the moment you’re down?”

“Really, it’s nothing.” Sorrow turned into concern as she fidgeted with the fork.

“Please…” Now it was Yohane the one to beg. Something in her voice broke Mari’s heart.

She took a deep breath. There were only the desserts left, anyway, so she couldn’t really ruin the meal that much. “I think the only friends I ever made by myself were Kanan and Dia; and even then, they were the ones to approach me.

“Then you have the whole year I spent in the US, but I never really got to get on with anyone, so you could say this is the first time I really made friends. You could even say I ended up giving in to Chika’s pleas to join the band because I thought it was my time, so to speak. The thing is… Aside from you, I didn’t really feel like I have that much in common with the other girls?”

“Me?” Yohane felt a faint light in her chest. Was she, of all people, _special_?

“Yeah. You know I used to be the kind of person who just went around pulling out pranks on other people, right? I sort of…” She shook her head in disapproval. “I totally did that because I wanted to stand out. In the beginning, I was just going to horse around a little to make the others laugh from time to time. The thing is, the line that separates light hearted jokes from abusive pranks began to blur as I planned things out, until I ended up in full brat mode.

“Nowadays, when I think about it, I can’t believe people didn’t stop speaking to me after all that.”

“So Chika’s photograph and Hanamaru’s phone…”

“Don’t get me wrong – I would have bought Hanamaru a phone anyway. It’s 2015, how are we going to coordinate ourselves without LINE?”

“But an iPhone?” An expression of disbelief jumped out of Yohane’s face. “Wasn’t there anything more expensive than that?”

“Laugh all you want, but Android has a really steep learning curve if you never used a computer before. She already knew how to use it by the next day!”

That much was right. “That doesn’t really explain Chika’s photograph, though.”

“Ok, that one was an apology gift…” she lamented.

“But you can’t just throw a gift to someone and act like that was an excuse. The world doesn't work that way.” If only Mari wasn’t so concerned with the topic of the argument, she would have realised the deep concern in Yohane’s voice.

“But the picture was in an envelope with a written apology!”

Yohane twisted her lips, looking for a way to explain her what she had in her mind. “The gift still looks like you think their feelings are… You know, an object? And you’re buying them. It feels like you don’t really care about the bonds you have with that person, but only about working things out. I don’t know, it feels dishonest to me.”

It was exactly the same explanation Kanan gave her at the time. She began to understand – she really had to start again from the bottom if she wanted her relationships to work, just as she had to learn how to spot fresh fish the hard way.

“And what should I do?” Mari’s voice was a mix of regret, plea and apology.

“I don’t think it was worth an excuse, really… Just not doing it again would have worked like a charm. Chika doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who holds a grudge, anyway. And the gift… If you excuse now, I think you will put her in an awkward position.

“Just let it be, really.”

Although she was being told it wasn’t a major concern, all she understood was that there was nothing she could do to make things up at that point. Still, it was worth mentioning she finally saw the light.

“Thank you… And sorry for making you sit through all of this.”

Yohane finished the conversation with a silent smile. It was her widest smile yet to show that night.

 

Having finished their meals, Yohane promptly approached Mari’s side and discreetly pecked the back of her hand with her own. Mari, although confused, held her hand. It stayed that way until they reached her room, where Mari would carefully close the door with a pang of guilt in her chest.

“I’m sorry I ended up making you bear yet another burden tonight. This was supposed to be a night for you to rest from whatever was afflicting you, but I ended up saying too much. Really, if–“

“Hold on a second!” Yohane interrupted, visibly conflicted. “Are you still thinking about that? And why do you talk like you just ruined the whole evening in a snap?” Her voice lowered, to the level of a whine. “You didn’t.”

Mari moaned, going to the bedroom as she spoke. “I just didn’t want to make this about me, but I never really learnt how to hide my emotions. So when you suddenly asked what was the deal, I felt my heart sinking. Have I known…”

“Have you known, nothing! Can’t you see this was the best part of the night?” Mari sharply turned her head upwards, her eyes wide open. “Imagine what it feels like to wander the world, having met a single friend who you eventually lost contact with.

“Being unable to reach her again, because you know neither where she lives or what her phone number is. You’re basically on your own for most of your life, watching people make friends left and right while you’re in the centre, isolated from the rest.” As Yohane went on, Mari felt herself be engulfed by a feeling of both hope and grief. “When you reach the conclusion it may be on you, that you’re just plain boring, you decide to add some spice to your personality, only to find out you’re a weirdo. And that isolates you even further.

“Then you reach high school. New school, new me, right? I even had some expectations, joining a club where my only friend ever happens to be. But by that time, reality hits me like a truck: turns out she’s totally different from me at this point.” Her palate was getting irritated as she spoke. Yohane, very much used to it, went on. “We share no common interests and even our personalities are nearly incompatible. She has a much better friend than me, for crying out loud…!” At this point, her throat itchy and constricted, she had to stop to breathe in, tears sprouting from her eyes. “I stood no chance.”

“But you hang out with Ruby and Hanamaru, don’t you?” Mari asked, as politely as she could. “Weren’t you eating sweet potatoes, some days ago?”

“That was the only time. Meanwhile, they’ve been making plans almost all weekends. And if I try to talk to any of them, the conversation will hit a dead end as soon as we go past the greetings. I don’t even know what a regular high schooler is supposed to do with friends in her free time, to begin with…”

Finally, she broke on tears. Mari didn’t even plan this out; quite on the contrary, she just let God act on their own, for she knew there was nothing more she could do at that point. All she had to offer was a privacy, a good experience and her own love, even if the last thing wasn’t really valuable.

Mari was a few feet apart as Yohane spoke, enough to leave her room but not too much to make her feel unlistened. As Yohane spiralled down into the root of her sorrow, Mari had unconsciously approached her, to the point where she only had to give a single step to have her less than an inch apart. At that point, she felt she had some degree of understanding of how feelings really worked, so she did the only thing she had known all her life.

She surrounded her with her hands, pressing her whole body against her chest and lifted and arm to caress her head. She once heard in a biopic ancient doctors had believed all affections could be removed from the body if you swiped the right part of the body in the right motion. Having remembered this fact, she procured to make a long motion all across her head to remove the bad experiences from her mind. After all, what was a head pat for, otherwise?

She assumed she was doing the right thing when Yohane moved her head over Mari’s shoulder, eventually falling silent. All that talk about being alone, not making plans with anybody else… Did that mean she never spent a night out at a friend’s house, celebrated a birthday party with friends, or even watched a film with someone else? Although Mari couldn’t tell the exact magnitude, she was painfully aware of the burden she had been carrying over her shoulders. For a whole decade, to make things worse.

Mari had a faint memory of her mother doing a similar thing some nights, when she began to cry in the middle of the night because her father had been away for so long. It was years ago, when she was still a child, but wasn’t Yohane a forsaken child in the body of a teenager, after all? Even if Mari couldn’t give her a childhood that was already lost, she promised herself to do all she had in her hands to give her a better life.

It wasn’t herself who she had to make the promise to, though.

“I know I can’t go back in time to fix your problems, but I will always be here for you, okay? Wherever I happen to be, there will always be a bed waiting for you, and I will make sure you can come home. Because you will always be my _sorella_.”

For the rest of the night, she would wonder what that word even meant.

 

The next day, Mari made her company through both the ferry and the bus ride. They were nearly behind the front door of her house when Yohane built up the courage to ask about that word.

Only then Mari realised she used Italian. Aside from greeting, she never used Italian unless she was talking with her mother’s family. She looked both sides to check there was no one in sight and told her. “ _Sorella_ is Italian for sister.”

A sharp cry went out of Yohane’s throat as she squeezed her between her arms. She never dreamed of making a friend ever again, let alone have a family member that really understood her.

**Fin**


End file.
